


Silver and Cold

by tolakasa



Series: Covre Meyanevil [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2007-02-23
Updated: 2015-02-11
Packaged: 2017-12-30 20:20:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1022968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tolakasa/pseuds/tolakasa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An investigation into a secretive community leads Dean and Sam to answers about their mother that they weren't even looking for, but the consequences might be more than they can handle. AU for season 3.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Article

**Author's Note:**

> This is a very slow-writing story and it keeps getting away from me, but now that I'm writing again, I am going to try to wrestle it back under control.

 

The article Sam ripped out of a magazine in a hospital waiting room didn't say much, just that there was some kind of closed community deep in the Appalachians, on a spot near the intersection of three state borders. It implied that they were Amish-like—in the sense of being isolated for religious reasons, not in the sense of being primitive, as one photo showed a very modern-looking computer lab—but that wasn't what had made him tear it out of the magazine (to the glaring disapproval of a seven-year-old waiting for X-rays). Sam's sharp eyes picked out unmistakable signs of old-school witchcraft in the accompanying photos.

_Very_ old-school. Things that hadn't been seen in _Europe_ in centuries, let alone in North America. Things only _hinted_ at in the oldest books.

A little digging—a _very_ little digging—uncovered the area's more colorful history: acrid dry fogs like smoke that settled on the local towns for days and often killed newborns and those with breathing problems; mysterious pillars of flame on the mountainsides; storms that went from pouring rain to hail to snow and back to rain in a matter of _minutes_ , and in all seasons—all dating as far back as there were records, and all unexplained. Then there were the more minor things: local legends about secretive clans of witches, failed attempts at ethnological studies, an inability to pin the closed community to any specific cultural heritage, and a complete and total lack of intermarriage. Anybody who married into the community _stayed_ in the community.

That was weird enough to kick Sam into full-fledged research mode, which only dug up more weirdness.

Before the age of child services, the community had taken in abandoned and orphaned children, like the Shakers; it had not been uncommon for mountain families with too many mouths to feed to turn over their youngest— _always_ the youngest, infants and toddlers, never children old enough to really remember anything. Very rarely an adult went in, usually a man and usually to marry one of the community women, but none of those adults ever came back out. If the numbers had been higher, if those adults hadn't remained in written contact with their families, the group would be on half a dozen cult watchlists.

Nobody ran from the group, either, which was just damned weird. No matter how controlling a cult got, no matter how strictly a group isolated itself, _somebody_ always managed to leave. But _these_ guys were so good that nobody was even sure what they called themselves. (The less-polite term bandied about by the locals was "witchfolk." The more PC of the neighboring towns referred to them geographically, the "people in Sister Valley.")

In the old days, when they still participated enough in society to allow their young men to be drafted, invariably one or two decided to stay outside. They didn't talk.

They also tended to spontaneously combust. One in Chicago in 1867, a guy who had spent the last days of the Civil War in a prison camp; one or two after every war since. Ten during Vietnam. In 1975, the community had registered itself, _en masse_ , as conscientious objectors.

Four mountains hemmed in the community—the Four Sisters, which in a freak of geography aligned perfectly with the compass points. Three towns in three states formed the "normal" border, all of which were apparently named for those mountains: Blood Sister, Green Sister, Night Sister. (The fourth and tallest was Snow Sister, which was apparently not special enough to have its own town.)

None of this was enough to make Dean want the job, even if Sam was having geekboy fits about it. He was way more interested in a possible ghost ship on Lake Michigan. Not to mention, Michigan was closer.

No, what caught his eye—and his attention—was a photo on a website Sam found, an anti-witchfolk site run by someone in Blood Sister. This guy hated everything about his neighbors, from their isolation (only bad people need privacy) to their cars (mainly Fords) to their clothes (normal enough) to their audacity in visiting government offices (how dare they). It was obvious to the webmaster that deviants like them should be banned from renting post office boxes.

It was obvious to Dean that this guy needed a life.

The website required a lot of skepticism, which was why Dean quickly gave up reading the venomous text that accompanied the "surveillance" photos that this idiot posted. Any time one of the witchfolk came into town, this guy and his cronies apparently lined the route, cameras and cellphones at the ready. By the tolerant smiles of the witchfolk in question, Dean suspected they were not only fully aware of their stalkers, but found the whole thing amusing.

But one of the pictures caught his eye, that of a man carting Amazon packages out of the post office. More specifically, it was the man's ring that caught Dean's attention, a wide silver band like only one Dean had ever seen.

Sam, thankfully, was too absorbed in trying to track down a lineage for those symbols to notice. The rings were easy to overlook; they were plain, easily mistaken for wedding bands.

That was why Dean wore his on the right hand, so no one made that mistake.

He was able to identify seven different people—five men, two women—who wore identical rings. Four on the left hand, three on the right. More importantly, there were several—er—witchfolk in the pictures who didn't wear rings at all. _Most_ of them didn't.

Which made the rings special.

Which made _his_ ring special.

Dean didn't know how he knew, what detail had triggered his subconscious to make the link. He just knew that those silver rings had something to do with his.

But when Sam asked, he muttered something about ghost boats not being as much fun as they were rumored to be, and didn't even argue about the longer drive.


	2. Night Sister

Night Sister was the largest of the towns, having the virtue of being within sight—if you stood at the town limits and squinted _really_ hard—of an interstate. It also sounded the most interesting.

It turned out to be just another small mountain town, still too small for the corporate influences of McDonald's and Wal-Mart. The main street (which was actually "Mountain View," not "Main") housed a handful of small restaurants, a few obnoxiously quaint antique shops, and the town's single motel. The one bar was also a decent little restaurant, and it was conveniently next to the motel.

Granted, Night Sister was so small that everything was pretty close to everything else. Dean hated to think how tiny Blood Sister and Green Sister were. He wondered if they even rated stoplights.

"So, I found a map," Sam said, around a mouthful of something that involved way too much greenery to be considered actual food. "Roads are questionable, though."

"Usually are in a place like this." The roads, maybe, but not the food; this steak was near perfect. And cheap, considering. To think, he'd been worried about the lack of fast food. "Think we'll have any problems?"

"Driving there? No. Getting in?" Sam shrugged. "Maybe. That article didn't mention their position on gun control. And there's this." Sam turned the laptop so Dean could see the screen. He'd been committing acts of spreadsheet again. "Those killer fogs?" He pointed to a column of dates. "They correspond almost exactly to the pillars of fire." He indicated a second column. "And _those_ correspond _exactly_ to the spontaneous combustions of the runaways." A third.

Sam was really going over the limit with this one. Pointing that out, however, would just ruin his mood, and probably send him back to moping over the deal and how to break it. The exuberance was a nice change, and Dean wasn't about to risk it. "Not all of them," Dean pointed out, opting for professionalism instead.

"But the fogs without fires still correspond to the spontaneous combustions! So maybe the fires were just where they couldn't be seen from outside!"

"Dude, calm down," Dean said, laughing. "I haven't seen you this excited over a case in—hell, ever. What's gotten into you?"

"These are _ancient_ European witch marks," Sam said, probably with no idea of just how much like an overly-enthused and slightly-inebriated grad student he sounded. "Finding them _here_ — Dean, this is beyond hunting, this is _archaeology!_ This is the kind of discovery that would have Indiana Jones drooling!"

"Sure, Dr. Jackson, whatever." Sam gave him a blank look. "Didn't you ever watch TV at college?" Dean tossed back a French fry. "It's probably just some of those, whaddyacallems. Celtic reconstructionists—"

"They're not Celtic!" Sam said, backing up the words by stabbing his salad ( _more_ greenery, geesh) viciously with his fork.

_And what did that poor tomato ever do to you?_ "There's all kinds of pagan groups out there now, dragging up all kind of shit they should know better than to mess with—"

"Not this," Sam said emphatically. "These symbols are the kinds of things only serious scholars know about."

Dean shook his head, grinning. "You're hopeless, Sammy."

" _Dean_ —"

Dean held up his hands in mock surrender. "I get it, I get it! It's a big deal! Just spare me any details I don't need to do the job, okay?"

Sam gave him a sharp look. "You're humoring me, aren't you?"

"I'm awesome that way."

"Jerk."

"Bitch. Here, eat some junk food before your system goes into shock." He reached to drop some fries onto Sam's plate, and his arm hit Sam's glass and sent it flying into Sam's lap. "Oops."

" _Dean!_ " Sam grabbed a napkin and tried to mop up the mess. "Dammit, this was my last clean shirt!"

"It was an accident!"

"Yeah, right." Sam sounded completely unconvinced. "You can pay for laundry this week."

"Will you quit spouting random Hebrew if—" Sam threw a balled-up napkin at him and headed for the bathroom. "It wasn't _that_ bad," Dean muttered, but Sam was out of range, so Dean applied himself to the rest of his steak.

He was just finishing when a voice snarled "Hey."

Dean looked up from his plate to see three burly locals, reeking of redneck, glaring down at him. He'd seen them at the bar earlier, been aware of the nasty looks shot his way, but when they hadn't done anything but nurse their beers and glare, he'd pushed them to the back of his mind. They must have been waiting for Sam to leave. "Yeah?"

The man in the lead grabbed his hand and damn near jerked his arm out of the socket. "This is a witchy ring," he finally rumbled. "You one of the witchfolk?"

"I'm not even sure what a 'witchfolk' is," Dean answered, pulling his arm free. "My brother and I are just passing through on our way to—"

"Only witchfolk wear these rings," the man persisted. "So you gotta be—"

"My girlfriend gave it to me," Dean lied smoothly.

"Then why're you wearing it on the right?" one of the other rednecks asked.

"Because she's my girlfriend, not my wife." Dean glanced around at the other patrons. Most were keeping their eyes carefully on their plates; a handful were watching suspiciously. Those would probably take the rednecks' side, which put the odds at ten to one, not three to one. Great. Just _wonderful_.

It wasn't that he minded a good barfight, it was just that he was used to doing _something_ to provoke it first. Something other than _breathing_ , anyway. And finding out about the ring was too important to risk getting tossed out of town. "I don't want any trouble—"

The lead redneck grabbed him by the collar and pulled him halfway out of the booth. "You were in for trouble when you came to town," he snarled. Dean flinched. He'd met corpses that smelled better than this guy's breath. "This is _our_ town! You can't keep comin' in like you own the place an' not 'spect us to protest!"

"Sure thing." It was extremely hard to talk and not inhale. "What did I do?"

"You're one of _them!_ You're fuckin' _unAmerican!_ You people are the reason we—"

"Troy!" The bartender's yell was followed by the unmistakable sound of a pump-action shotgun. "Leave them alone!"

"But he's—"

"Ain't none of your business _what_ he is, it's my place and I'll have who I want in here! Now get!"

Troy gave him a sullen glare and let go of Dean. Dean managed to catch himself so that he didn't land on the table, but just barely. They were _definitely_ going to have to do laundry. "You just watch yourself, witchy man," Troy growled and stalked off, his buddies in tow, just as Sam came out of the bathroom.

"Dean, you okay?" Sam asked. He shot a confused look at Troy's back. "What happened?"

"Oh, you missed all the fun." Dean rubbed the back of his neck. "Apparently I'm one of the 'witchfolk' now, whatever that means."

"How—" Dean held up his hand. "I don't—"

"Some of them wear rings like this." Sam frowned. "Those guys didn't exactly have an eye for detail." He glanced around; they were getting double the suspicious looks now. "If you're done, let's go."

"Okay." Sam packed up the laptop.

The bartender, who was also manning the register, waved away Dean's credit card. "Least I can do for Troy's meanness," he said.

"We couldn't," Sam began, "really—"

"Don't be insulting my hospitality, boy." All the friendliness was gone from the bartender's voice, and the look he shot Sam was murderous. Dean raised an eyebrow. Usually people were instantly hostile to _him_ ; those puppy-dog eyes tended to give Sam an annoying and instantaneous trust-me aura. "Just because the Valley people tolerate your kind don't mean I do." Sam blinked. "You better not come back in here."

"His kind?" Dean asked.

"You want to meet locals for a night, _stac'he_ , fine, just not in my bar. Get enough trouble from the church as it is for selling booze."

"But—I—we—we're not—"

"Speech impediment," Dean interrupted, giving Sam a sharp elbow in the ribs. "Makes him sound way dumber than he is. Thanks for the meal. C'mon, Sammy." He steered Sam out the door before anybody _else_ started in on them. "That was weird."

"No kidding." Sam shot a confused look over his shoulder as they walked towards the motel. "Did I just get gay-bashed?"

"It was bound to happen eventually." That earned him a punch in the arm. "What?"

"Smartass."

"One of us has to be. Did that sound familiar to you?"

"What?"

"That word the bartender said." He racked his brain for it. " _Stac'he?_ Was that it? You ever hear that?"

"No." Sam gave him a look. "Should I?"

"Not at all?"

"It wasn't Latin, Spanish, or French, and it didn't sound like Greek or Hebrew."

"Sam, could you _not_ be geekboy right now?" He unlocked the door to their room.

"Sorry, I thought when you asked the question you actually wanted an answer." Sam closed the door behind them, and reached for the salt to fix the lines. "What's gotten into you?"

"Nothing," Dean said. "Just— I swear I've heard that word before. _Stac'he_."

"Then what does it mean?"

"I didn't say I knew what it meant, just that I'd heard it before." He collapsed onto his bed.

"Maybe in Dad's journal?"

"Not read. _Heard_. I _know_ I've heard it."

Sam gave him a long look. "Dean, you're not making any sense."

"You think I don't _know_ that?" Dean snapped. "This whole job— Something's not right."

"What?"

"If I knew, I'd tell you! It—it just—" He stopped. "What if I told you that it made me think of Mom? Way back before you were born? Something so far back I can barely remember that I remember it?"

"Mom," Sam repeated. Dean wondered if he'd stared at Sammy that way when Sam told him about the visions. "But Mom was from Kansas. Like Dad. Wasn't she?"

"Far as I know, but hell, I was only four. I barely knew where _I_ was from. Dad never said anything, but— Sammy, what if _he_ didn't know?"

"You mean, something Mom never told him."

Dean nodded. "Yeah. Something like that."

Sam sat down, very slowly. "I think," he said finally, quietly, "that we need to go to Sister Valley."


	3. Sister Valley

Visiting the Valley was a lot harder than it sounded, but not for the reasons they'd expected.

They'd anticipated that the witchfolk would be against visitors, that they might have to pose as would-be initiates or whatever, maybe even have to hike in, but it turned out that their first, and primary, problem was much, much simpler.

Nobody would give them directions.

It wasn't entirely because they were outsiders. Apparently, the witchfolk didn't invite _anybody_ over. The handful of locals who knew the location of the Valley weren't sharing, and the witchfolk themselves didn't give directions to _anybody_. They hadn't even given directions to those reporters. When Sam finally got hold of the reporter, he was told that the delegation had met the Valley representatives in town and been driven in. And when Sam and Dean tried to research it themselves....

The library didn't have anything on the Valley but a few local histories, none of which had anything that Sam hadn't been able to find from other sources. The sheriff didn't even bother looking at their forged IDs, just automatically dismissed them as tourists—apparently a few others had been drawn here by the article—and gave them quite the blistering lecture on "bothering harmless people who just want to live their own lives," one impressive enough to have scared off the real FBI. When the county had gotten around to giving everybody a street address for their 911 system, an exemption for the Valley had been written into the statute; the commissioners hadn't even bothered asking the Valley if they wanted 911 service—or, for that matter, if they _wanted_ a normal street address. The post office only had a very large PO box under long-term rental and an agreement to use their street address for any packages that required one.

If anything was proof of real magic around here, it was the way the Valley inhabitants had gotten all these bureaucracies to work in their favor no matter how much bending of the law was required.

One could, supposedly, access the Valley from a local road, but the precise location of that access was something of a mystery. There wasn't even a consensus as to which road it was—probably a safety measure to keep the bigots from storming the castle.

But it made things harder on _them_ , and dammit, they had perfectly legitimate reasons for meeting these people.

So they had to do things the old-fashioned way: lurk outside the post office, trying not to look like stalkers or terrorists, until somebody came for a package. That was harder than it sounded. The idiots from the anti-witchfolk website _always_ had at least two people posted at the barber shop/gun store across the street, snapping photos like they were a rogue branch of the CIA and posting them on the Internet with the abandon of teenage girls, and the last thing Sam and Dean needed was to wind up on that website themselves, in case some Fed kept an eye on it. At least the site had _some_ use, letting them identify the mail vehicle of choice for the Valley as a battered little green pickup. It didn't have a regular driver—or a regular license plate, for that matter, but apparently nobody else had noticed that the number got swapped every couple of trips. More proof that the local cops were keeping a much closer eye on the local idiots than the local eccentrics.

Then again, as Sam pointed out, the local eccentrics were probably worth a lot more to the local economy; there were way more of them, with all evidence of disposable income, while most of the bigots seemed to be unemployed for no good reason. Even with the economy in the mess it was, there were still decent-enough jobs within commuting distance, and those guys were _all_ young and healthy enough to still be working rather than sitting in front of a barber shop bitching about the state of the world. The local eccentrics _bought_ things—not a lot, true, but even in this day and age, there were still things that you couldn't make yourself or that weren't worth the cost of shipping, and in this economy, the local merchants weren't about to sneer at _any_ sales. The witchfolk weren't exactly shopping for staples—every scrap of information, historical or otherwise, indicated that they were farmers and produced most of their own food—but once Sam and Dean figured out what to watch for, it became plain that the witchfolk spent a _lot_ of money in the hardware store and were probably the only reason the grocery store bothered stocking some of its more exotic produce. The individual drivers had their own shopping lists, too: Tuesday's driver _always_ went into the teensy needlecraft shop squeezed between two of the antique stores, and the guy who usually did Fridays never came to town without wandering into the little tourist-trap general store next to the post office and coming out with a box of candy.

Dean didn't blame him. That boxed candy was damned good, even if it was some kind of pretentious organic-local-handmade stuff packaged to lure in the yuppies. He hoped he got a chance to stock the Impala with some of it, despite its touristy price tag.

"Going to eat the whole box?" Sam asked mildly while they sat in the Impala and tried to look inconspicuous, waiting for the mail guy.

"I offered you some."

"I wanted to keep my fingers." Sam was grinning, so Dean decided not to reward that comment with a smack. "Seriously, is it _that_ good?"

"Man, this is the best thing since pie. Here." He dropped a piece—a small piece—of candy into Sam's hand. "Buy your own box, though."

Sam popped the candy into his mouth and made an appreciative noise. "Think I will," he finally managed "I'll be—"

"Later. There he is."

The green pickup parked in front of the post office. "That's a new driver," Dean said, watching the man disappear into the building, and Sam nodded. "Think something's up?"

"They probably just have a rotation. Everybody gets a chance to get out of the Valley, do some shopping, something like that. Or one of the regulars is sick."

"I thought the witchfolk didn't get sick."

"I think you have the Valley people confused with actual witches." Sam refused to classify them as witches yet, just like he refused to call them "witchfolk"—not without more proof, he said.

Dean had to admit, they didn't act like typical witches. Dark or light, witches interfered with the normal way of things, they couldn't help themselves; these people just seemed to want to be left alone. And for all the accusations of them being a cult, they weren't out recruiting like most cults did. They didn't even have a website of their own. They reminded him more of the Amish than anything, except that they clearly had no issue with modern technology.

Maybe this was nothing, but if it was nothing, why did the word _stac'he_ keep echoing in his memory like he should know it?

The driver emerged from the post office with a single large box—not Amazon this time, but Dean didn't recognize the logo—that he tossed into the cab through an open window. He glanced across the street at the barbershop brigade, and did what could only be described as "striking a pose" for them.

"Did he just—"

"I _like_ this one." Dean laughed. "I think Troy's about to have a stroke."

"We can only hope," Sam grumbled. Sam had run into Troy on a solo run to the laundromat, and leaving the ass with a black eye and sprained ego had only made Sam more grumpy. Dean kept expecting to find one of the idiots trailing _them_ , especially since Troy had gotten a good look at his ring, but so far, so good.

For the first time in their lives, though, Dean was legitimately worried that Sam might "accidentally" shoot somebody.

On the bright side, he didn't think the sheriff would care as long as person getting shot was Troy. Nobody but the barbershop brigade seemed to care much about Troy.

The driver quit posing, with a bow that could only be described as "sarcastic" to the chorus of idiots, and climbed into his truck. "Here we go," Dean muttered, starting the Impala.

There was no way to avoid being seen—even if the town wasn't so small that the Impala might as well have been wearing license plates stamped VISITOR, there wasn't enough traffic for them to hide in. Hell, there wasn't _any_ traffic once they got past the city limits, just the pickup and the Impala. "Mark the road, Sam," he said when the pickup made a turn into a graveled drive that led up straight up the side of a mountain, blocked by a massive wrought-iron gate. "Is that—"

"Night Sister," Sam confirmed, making a neat little X on the map. "The lady at the library said nobody climbed the Sisters, so that's got to be the way in."

"Kinda obvious for a secret entrance."

"Not necessarily," Sam said after a moment's thought. "Private drives like that probably aren't uncommon once you get out of town. People with money move to places like this for privacy. The gates keep random people from thinking they're public dirt roads."

"I guess." The pickup had stopped a few yards into it so that the driver could unlock the gate—and give them an icy stare. "Wave the map like a tourist, Sammy." Sam obeyed. "With any luck, he'll think we're just lost."

"They're going to be suspicious."

"The local idiots think we're witchfolk and everybody else thinks we're with the idiots. The whole fucking _town's_ suspicious, Sam. Find me a route back to town."

Sam began tracing lines on the map with his finger. "I think this _is_ the route back to town. According to the map, this road ends after this cur—"

" _Holy fucking shit!_ " Dean stomped the brakes and the Impala screeched to a halt—nudging a once-white barrier that was all that stood between them and a cliff edge. "Some fucking _warning_ would have been nice!" he shouted.

"Hey, I said—"

"Not you, Sam, the damn road! Most people put up dead end signs _before_ people reach the fucking dead end! Fucking hillbillies!" He swore a bit more. "You okay?"

"I'll live."

"Seriously, one sign would have killed them? Especially since you can't _see_ the damn thing from around that curve?" Dean backed the Impala away from the sign and turned her around. "And a decent guardrail would have killed their budget?"

"It's got the back entrance to Night Sister and a couple of abandoned farms. I don't think this road gets a lot of traffic."

"Well, no, because they all get killed going over the edge! That river's probably full of dead tourists and their cars!"

"If I give you a piece of candy, will you calm down?"

" _SAM!_ "

Sam shoved the box of candy in his direction and wrestled with the map for a minute. "Huh. That's interesting."

"What is? And see if I ever offer you candy again."

"Well, the you'd think that river would be called the Sister River or something, given the naming scheme around here, but it's not. It does cut through the Valley, according to this, but it's the _Sacrifice_ River."

"Jesus." More freaks like that scarecrow cult. This case just kept getting better and better. "I'm starting to think Troy has the right idea."

"There's no proof the people in the Valley named it," Sam pointed out—irritably, because any mention of Troy made him bitchy. "It could just be based on some legend. Hell, it could be a corruption of a Native American name. I mean, there's a story that 'Yucatan' means 'I can't understand you,' which is what the natives said when the Spaniards asked where they were, since they didn't actually speak Spanish, but the Spanish for some reason assumed that they'd just magically—"

"I get it!"

"It's just—they've never shown much use for anything outside the Valley. Whatever _they_ call the river, I doubt they bothered putting it on _our_ maps."

"And they've been here how long?" Dean asked acidly.

"As far back as— Good point. They could have been the ones to tell the normal settlers what they'd named it." They approached the driveway again. It was empty. "Think he didn't see us?"

"No way. He looked right at us."

"Any chance he bought the lost tourist act?"

"I don't know," Dean admitted. "I don't think we should count on it." That would require luck, and neither one of them much believed in _good_ luck anymore. He especially didn't believe in luck on _this_ job. Not with the nagging sense of unease that just wouldn't go away, the one that had been lingering since he first heard the word _stac'he_.

"We could try going in now."

"No." Dean was certain of that much. He was not just going to walk in to that place.

"But—"

"Not right now." Dean hit the accelerator, and they sped past the driveway and back towards town. "Tonight."

***

The green pickup, boasting a few fresh splotches of broken egg, was parked in front of the post office when they got back to town. "Shit," Sam muttered. "He must have turned around and come straight back."

"Because of us?"

"Maybe. It can't be for the mail, they already got that."

"Do they come into town for anything else?"

"The guy at the restaurant made it sound like he had stacky—"

" _Stac'he_ ," Dean corrected automatically, and was immediately horrified.

Sam's eyes narrowed. "What?"

"It's a—it's like _father_ , not like _cat_. And the last part is like _hey_. _Stac'he_."

"Did _you_ just correct my pronunciation?" Sam asked incredulously.

"I—um—"

"You did." Sam was staring _through_ him. "The way you know this stuff—"

"I am _so_ ahead of you with the panic, Sammy." He couldn't meet his brother's gaze. "Look, I don't know why I know it, okay? I just _do_. It's pronounced _stac'he_ , and they're not like the _zahe_ , and I don't know where the fuck that came from either."

There was a long, awkward silence. "So," Sam finally said, "it sounds like the _stac'he_ —" He got it right this time. "—are in the restaurant all the time. The only problem the guy had was that he thought I was your boyfriend." Sam still got a hilarious bitchface every time that came up. "So maybe the _stac'he_ , whatever they are, leave the Valley."

"So part of the population gets to take nights off and go on dates, and the rest of them _never_ leave? That makes no sense."

"It doesn't have to make sense to _us_ as long as it makes sense to them." Sam had on his "thinking" expression. "Not everybody wears the rings, clearly, so they could indicate some kind of privileged class. Normal members don't get to leave, but the ones who earn rings can, at least, on a limited basis. A lot of closed communities have that kind of setup. They could be the elite—"

"So if you work really hard and eat all your veggies, you get to pick up the mail? I hope they get better rewards inside the Valley." Dean parked the car and glanced down the street. The mail guy was standing beside his truck, oblivious to Troy and the choir of assholes across the street. The sun was at a bad angle, so Dean couldn't see clearly, but he was dead certain that the man was staring at the Impala. "Do you think he came back for us?"

"I don't know."

Dean got out of the car. He met the imagined stare of the _stac'he_ evenly as Sam climbed out. Was there a shadow moving inside the truck? Somebody else? Dean tried to focus, but whenever he did, the shadow he thought he saw faded into the rest of them, and the glaring sunlight started to give him a headache. "We are _not_ going back out there tonight," he said.

Sam followed his gaze. "I don't think I'll argue with that."

"You said you needed to do some more research, right?"

Sam hadn't said anything of the sort, but he only nodded. "More research can't hurt."

***

The truck never left. It was there when they started to leave for dinner. The driver was still there, too, watching them, though he was now sitting in the back of his pickup with a friend, a deck of cards, and a pizza.

It spooked them _both_ enough that they called for pizza of their own rather than leaving the room. Sam left the room briefly around midnight—well-armed—to fetch drinks and ice. "They're still out there," he said when he came back in.

" _Still?_ "

"There's more." He tossed a can of Coke at Dean. "The friend apparently brought another car. SUV of some kind."

"Shit." Most of their weapons were still in the Impala. He hadn't been planning on cleaning the armory, so only the basics were here in the room. "Anything in the research about what might fend off witchfolk? Some of those symbols you were drooling over earlier?"

Sam threw him a frustrated look. "Yeah, and then I'll translate the Dead Sea Scrolls. They're not a _language_ , Dean, at least, not one anybody knows anymore. Without knowing more about them, I'd be writing gibberish." He shoved a page of notes at Dean. "You're the one who keeps thinking he recognizes stuff. You take a look."

"Already did, and I didn't." He caught himself starting to twist the ring on his finger, and covered it by opening his drink. " _Stac'he_ ," he muttered to himself.

"What?"

"Just thinking out loud." He stared at the silver band on his finger—the ring that had gotten him mistaken for a _stac'he_. "It was Mom's, you know."

"What was?"

"The ring. It belonged to Mom." Sam's eyes widened. "I found it in the glove compartment. I don't think Dad even remembered it was still in there. It was in a little box tied up with a rubber band all the way in the back, behind the IDs and emergency clips."

"Mom's ring _fit_ you?"

Leave it to Sam to grab on to the most irrelevant part. "I didn't think it would." Why did he keep wanting to twist the ring? He never had before. "I mean, I _knew_ it wouldn't, it didn't look big enough to wear on my little finger, but— I don't know, Sam. Something made me try it on anyway, and it was like it changed. Like it adjusted to fit me."

"And you didn't tell Dad?"

"Dad didn't want to talk about it. All he would say was that it was hers, she had it when they met, but she quit wearing it before they got married. It was weird, Sammy, it was like he couldn't even _see_ it most of the time, like it wasn't there at all. I offered to put it back, but he wouldn't let me. Said she was keeping it for us, so I might as well wear it."

"Why didn't he sell it? Or—"

"Or melt it?" Sam nodded. "Asked him that. He said she insisted it couldn't be sold. He thought it was an heirloom or something. And since it was so important to her—"

"He wouldn't sell it and he couldn't stand to see it, so he stuffed it in a box and put it in the glove compartment and forgot it was there."

"Yeah." He hesitated, then figured full disclosure was probably best. "I recognized the rings. In the article. That's why I didn't fight you on the job."

"So the other night wasn't just Troy being Troy. It was the ring." Sam was quiet, just looking at the ring on Dean's finger. "You really think these people are connected to Mom?"

"I don't know. I don't see how. But at this point...." He went over to the window, pulled the drapes back a bit. "Fog's coming in."

"Fog? That wasn't in the forecast."

"I was afraid you'd say that." Not that he needed the Weather Channel to tell him that the thickening mist outside the window wasn't quite natural. He'd seen summoned fogs before. "I wish they'd do whatever the hell it is they're going to do already."

"It _could_ just be—"

"Trust me, Sammy," Dean said, not even sure how he knew, "it's not." He turned away from the window. "Maybe they're waiting for us to go to sleep."

"You want to trick them? Dean, we don't even know what to use on them."

"They're people, right? Bullets should at least slow them down."

"Maybe." Sam came over to look over his shoulder. The fog outside had thickened into a silver blanket. The lights on the street and parking lot only reflected off the mist and made the fog seem thicker; they didn't illuminate a thing. It was so bad that he could barely see the Impala, and it was parked right outside. "This isn't right," Sam muttered, and went to reinforce the salt lines.

"No shit." Every instinct he had was screaming _run_ —but where? There wasn't even a window in the bathroom for them to try to escape out of, and that was assuming these people weren't smart enough to post somebody back there if there _had_ been one.

Two shadows emerged from the bright fog. Dean couldn't make out features; by the shape, they were wearing long dresses of some kind, but he couldn't be sure they were women. Those could just be some weird kind of ritual robes. All he could make out was the general shape—

" _Holy shit!_ " Sam jumped away from the door. "Dean—"

"I see it." Silvery tendrils were threading their way through the cracks around the door. They didn't lose shape or brightness, didn't thin like a real fog should have. The ones at the bottom explored the salt line like fingers—then went right through it, pushing the salt out of its way.

"So much for salt," Dean muttered.

The tendrils thickened and twisted themselves into something arm-thick, more like a tentacle. It raised itself up and felt around.

Sam had pulled the bag of herbs out of the emergency stash by now and threw a random selection at the fog, but they were just as effective as the salt.

This wasn't right. Witchcraft had _weaknesses_ , dammit, and they were pretty universal ones.

The fog turned the deadbolt, then found and undid the chain.

"Oh, _shit_ ," Sam said, and they both lunged for the door in a desperate attempt to get it refastened, but before either took more than a step, the fog dissipated. The door blew open, so hard it slammed against the wall.

Dean saw only a pair of robed shadows silhouetted against the parking lot lights before the world went black.

 


End file.
